


Sherlock/Holmes

by scribblesandscreeds



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, S4 didn't happen, but also kind of AU within the inevitable AU?, woo I actually updated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-09-19 23:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9465515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblesandscreeds/pseuds/scribblesandscreeds
Summary: Don’t ignore me, Sherlock. I can see that you’re reading this.If you don’t answer me I’m going to get annoyedIs that what you want?When I’ve got dear old uncle Holmes tied to a chair?STOP IGNORING MEJohn Watson may not be the one who is famous for being mind-bogglingly clever, but he isn’t stupid enough to dismiss something that concerns the one whoisjust because it looks superficially harmless. So when Sherlock turns up on his doorstep with some strange messages on his phone, he takes them seriously. When they have to mount a rescue mission, there is one nagging question that won't go away - just who, precisely, are they rescuing?





	1. Texts from the Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure exactly when I'm setting this. If something is incompatibly out of time with tv canon(wasn't Sherlock a great show? Such a shame it never got a fourth series), then I guess it's just AU. I mean, it's kind of got to be AU anyway...  
> And yes, there are still places where you can get your milk delivered, still in foil-topped glass bottles. Mine is delivered by the campest milkman in the West.

> Your uncle is a fascinating man
> 
> He’s very old fashioned though, isn’t he?
> 
> And a tad confused

“What do you make of this, John?” 

Sherlock’s face was the sort of blank it went when he was too preoccupied by what was going on behind it in his brain to bother with arranging it into some sort of nonverbal signal of an expression. John - having just opened his front door to get the milk in, and finding his best friend standing there getting gently rained on with his finger almost on the doorbell - took the phone from his hand by reflex. The screen had only just dimmed, so he managed to poke it back into life before it started asking for a security pattern. He blinked a couple of times before his eyes would focus properly, then read the little green speech bubbles. In the hope of finding some context, he read the name of the person - Lab Molly - from whom they had come. That didn’t help.  
  
“I don’t have an uncle.” Sherlock’s face didn’t really change, but his eyes suggested that he was troubled. That, and that he was there, not long after stupid o’clock in the morning, wanting John’s opinion on what looked like some innocuous, if a bit confusing, messages. Well. John Watson may not be the one who was famous for being mind-bogglingly clever, but he wasn’t stupid enough to dismiss something that concerned the one who _was_ just because it looked superficially harmless.  
  
He stood to one side, preemptively but only by a fraction of a second, before the drizzle-sparkled detective stalked into his house and headed to the kitchen. 

_bzzt_

The phone vibrated briefly in his hand, and he automatically looked to read the new message.  
  
The phone’s case, and the fact that it was not a brand that liked their products to be self-shattering if at all possible, meant that it bounced twice but sustained no damage from the laminate wood flooring when he dropped it. It was only when Sherlock snapped back around to stare at him that John realised a sharp, sub-verbal cry had been startled out of him.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
John bent awkwardly to retrieve Sherlock’s phone from where it had skittered to, between the umbrella stand and the hall table. His fingers felt strange as he handed it back. Sort of fizzy. His voice sounded a bit weird, too.  
  
“Look.”  


> This is Jim, by the way

Sherlock’s face was no longer blank, but the fearful expression on it hadn’t been planned. Someone else might have whispered _No, it can’t be_ in tones of dull horror, or _I was afraid of this_ in flat resignation, or shouted _Fuck! Fuck! It’s him, he’s back, we’re fucking dead!_ He said nothing, just stared at the screen with wide eyes until another _bzzt_ redundantly heralded a further message a few seconds later. 

> Molly left her tablet signed in. She also left it lying out in Costa.

Sherlock broke out of his trance. He carefully pressed the power button to lock his phone, not shaking at all, and pocketed it.  
  
“Put the kettle on, will you? I feel the need for some tea.”  
  
John’s mouth fell open.  
  
“You’ve just got a text from _Jim bloody Moriarty_ who is supposed to be _dead_ and you want _tea?”_  
  
“A series of messages through a third party app _purporting_ to be from Jim bloody Moriarty, who is supposed to be dead, but generally that’s the gist of it, yes.” Sherlock fished his phone back out of his pocket and put it down on John’s kitchen table, then sat down. “Was tea ever more necessary?”  
  
“It can’t be Molly playing a vile, hideous joke. She wouldn’t do that, not with that name.” John said, busying himself with the comfortingly automatic process of making tea for two. Builder’s brew with twice as much milk as anyone else, and a weak Earl Grey with none at all. Mary sometimes liked an Earl Grey, but mostly he kept it in the cupboard for Sherlock.  
  
“No.” Sherlock murmured, his chin on his linked hands, his eyes on his phone. It lay a safe distance away in the middle of the table, looking nothing at all like a snake coiled up ready to strike. It buzzed, and he made a commendable effort to not flinch.  
  
“Are you going to read that?” John opened the fridge.  
  
“Don’t bother getting the milk out yet, the kettle’s barely started boiling. It’ll just be sitting out getting warm needlessly.” He dragged his eyes up to meet John’s. “No.”  
  
John shut the fridge door, the milk still in it. Monday’s milk, he realised - he’d opened the front door to bring in today’s, but funnily enough, he hadn’t actually done it. It could wait. The phone buzzed again, and dragged Sherlock’s eyes back down.  
  
“What does she have you saved as in her phone?” John asked, hand on the kettle, ready to pick it up off the base and pour. Sherlock looked back up at him, quizzically. “Is it a nickname, or your real name? Would a random stranger with a sick sense of humour recognise it as you if they went through her contacts?”  
  
“Not a bad thought, for someone pre-theanine. See if she’s said anything anywhere about losing her phone, or tablet.”  
  
“Because they might have said ‘tablet’ to throw you, and they’ve actually got her phone.”  
  
“Yes.” Sherlock closed his eyes momentarily. It was a sign of his high regard for John that he didn’t say anything along the lines of _no shit, I got that as soon as you asked what she calls me._ His phone buzzed.  
  
“Bollocks.” John muttered a few minutes later, after retrieving his own tablet from where it was charging by the microwave, turning it on, pausing while it did that to pour the boiling water, muttering darkly at how infuriatingly long the tablet took to start up and stop crowing about what brand it was so that he could actually use it, poking various social media apps until they worked, and finding Molly’s accounts on each. “‘Some bastard’s had my tablet. Grrrr so annoyed at least it’s insured. All my photos from Magaluf were on there.’” He read out. “And then there’s a row of frowny faces.”  
  
Sherlock’s phone buzzed. A few seconds later, it buzzed again.  
  
“Mm. Anyway, she’s got my number saved as ‘Knobhead Einstein’. Even if they recognised her as one of my associates, how many people would assume that referred to me?”  
  
“Only the ones who’ve ever met you.” John answered the rhetorical question, putting down a mug in front of him. He’d meant it as a joke, to lighten the mood, but the implication that whoever was sending the messages therefore _had_ met Sherlock made it fall flat. He pulled a chair around, and sat down next to him.  
  
“So the messages are coming from Molly’s tablet. The thief wants me to believe that he is Moriarty. This much is clear.” Sherlock steepled his index fingers and tapped them against his lips. “Why the nonsense about my nonexistent uncle?”  
  
“It’s got your attention.” John said reluctantly. “Wait, did it say your ‘uncle’ was-” He reached for the phone. Sherlock slapped his hand away.  
  
“Don’t! It’ll show as read.”  
  
“How else are you going to find out? I know that face. You’re stuck, you need more data.”  
  
Sherlock locked his eyes on John’s. They stayed there for an uncomfortably long time.  
  
His phone buzzed.  
  
He picked it up.

> Don’t ignore me, Sherlock. I can see that you’re reading this.
> 
> He looks nothing like you, still the resemblance is uncanny
> 
> If you don’t answer me I’m going to get annoyed
> 
> Is that what you want?
> 
> When I’ve got dear old uncle Holmes tied to a chair?
> 
> He clearly hasn’t taken his medication, he’s delirious. Is that why you keep him a secret? That’s not very nice.
> 
> STOP IGNORING ME

“It does sound like him.” Sherlock admitted, showing John the screen. “It may just be a good imitation though.”  
  
“What if it _is_ some random stranger with a sick sense of humour, and they’re playing the averages by assuming you’ve got an uncle, but they used up all their luck working out who you are?”  
  
“That is not how probability works.” Sherlock said flatly, but conceded the point. It was possible, and more likely than Jim Moriarty getting kicked out of Hell and sent back to life. Just.

> There you are. Lucky Uncle Holmes, I was about to get my hands dirty.

> Who is this?

> I already told you that, Sherlock. Don’t play stupid with me. It won’t wash.

> I’m not playing stupid. I just don’t believe you.

The phone was still for a moment, and they began to hope that this was an end to it.  
Then it buzzed twice, in quick succession.

> How about now?

Above that was a picture. Once it had loaded, it showed a man, maybe in his fifties, rather tall, sitting on a chair. His arms were pulled unnaturally straight down by his sides, and his shins were perfectly aligned with the front legs of the chair, giving away the fact that he was bound to it even though the rope was indistinct. He was dressed formally - he’d either been on his way to a funeral or was a depressed steam punk - with a black waistcoat over his white shirt, matching sharply pressed pinstriped trousers. There was a pocket watch chain strung across one breast of the waistcoat. He was in a cone of harsh white light, which made whatever was behind him impossible to distinguish, and would have even if it hadn’t been a low resolution chat photo.  
  
“Well, he’s right about one thing. He looks nothing like you.”

> You’re right about one thing. He looks nothing like me.

> You’re a terrible person. And a worse nephew.

Sherlock’s phone buzzed, this time for a sustained period of time.  
  
“He’s calling me.” He said hollowly.  
  
Through a surge of adrenaline, John managed to sound almost nonchalant when he said  
  
“You’d better answer, then.”  
  
Sherlock pressed the green handset icon on the screen. It processed this for a bit, then filled with a shaky image, the same angle as the photo but now a live video.  
  
“Tell us your name again.” A horrifyingly familiar Irish voice said, from off-screen.  
  
“That could be a recording.” John mouthed at Sherlock, who nodded tersely. The man in the chair began to speak.  
  
“I told you that already.” Contempt dripped from a stern, resonant tenor. The stranger’s face said that he had no patience for this nonsense, a brave sentiment to express when a bruise was already beginning to darken his eye socket.  
  
Frost crept up John’s spine at that voice, and Sherlock breathed in sharply through his nose. Neither of them had heard it before, and yet it was familiar, indescribably but undeniably _familiar._  
  
“You’re not telling me now, you’re telling them. Say it to the camera.” The man in the chair looked blank. The image shook twice, as the tablet capturing it was tapped. “Look here. Now say what you told me before.” John considered how much work it would take to source and stitch together existing clips of Jim Moriarty’s voice, and how likely it was that the person who did it would anticipate needing those exact phrases. The conclusions _a lot_ and _not very_ were very stubborn about existing.  
  
The man tied to the chair sighed, and deigned to speak again.  
  
“My name, as I have said before, is Sherlock Holmes.”


	2. And who are you, sir? Speak!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had known the man, as surely as they knew that they had never seen or met him before in their lives. How, when logic dictated that he was clearly supposed to be in a specialist care home, being looked after by people who were equipped to deal with his delusion that he was Sherlock Holmes?

“And the rest.” Moriarty’s disembodied - hopefully literally - voice ordered. The man in the chair squeezed his eyes shut and sighed, then with the air of a sorely tried Maths teacher explaining the law of the Hypotenuse to a particularly dim child for the seventh time, continued  
  
“My address is 221B Baker Street, and I am the world’s first consulting detective.” His gaze suddenly snapped away from the camera, to a point behind and to the left of it, and was suddenly piercing, intense. Hawk-like. John cringed away from it, even from behind the safety of at least two mobile devices and a satellite. The man’s voice hardened, and became clipped. “You, I suppose, are some creature of Professor Moriarty’s.”  
  
The camera shook, and with a motion-sickness-inducing whirl, settled on the face of the person holding it. Sherlock twisted his wrist to the right, angling the phone so that John wasn’t in shot.  
  
“D’you hear that? Apparently I’m a creature!” It was Moriarty. It was definitely Moriarty. Short of experimental Hollywood-budget CGI to map his face and voice, live, onto another person’s head, it had to be Jim bloody Moriarty, who was supposed to be dead. Jim laughed. “You hear that rolled ‘r’? I tell you, I could listen to this man reading the phone book. Beautiful voice! Shame you didn’t inherit it.”  
  
“What do you want?” Sherlock asked bluntly. He could scream into a paper bag later. Jim pouted on the screen in his hand.  
  
“It’s nice to see you, too. What I want is to talk to you.”  
  
“Talk.” He instructed coldly.  
  
“That’s right! Well done on the whole not-playing-stupid thing.”  
  
“No. You. Talk. Now.”  
  
Jim rolled his eyes.  
  
“Really, Sherlock? No. In person. I’d send you a complicated cipher or glyph or whatever for you to play with, but I want you here now so I’ll send you the address. Come alone, no police, blah blah blah.” The image abruptly froze, then disappeared.  
  
Sherlock let his phone tumble out of his hands and slowly brought them up to his face. The phone buzzed one last time, adding a fat green speech bubble to the bottom of the conversation with an address in it. The screen timed out, went black.  
  
“You don’t have to go.” John said, but his voice lacked conviction.  
  
“That poor delusional bastard-” Sherlock protested.  
  
“Yeah.” John agreed weakly. “Whoever he is, we can’t leave him with Moriarty.”  
  
“No.” But there was more to it than that. Letting a stranger die horribly would be awful, but it would be on Moriarty. After all, he had killed before, had taunted them with other people’s deaths before. Nobody could seriously expect Sherlock and John to risk their own lives for a stranger. Nobody would blame them for calling Lestrade and putting it into his hands. If the police acted now, they might save many more lives further down the line. Even though it would almost certainly mean collateral damage of at least one person.  
  
One very intriguing person.  
  
They had known the man, as surely as they knew that they had never seen or met him before in their lives. How, when logic dictated that he was clearly supposed to be in a specialist care home, being looked after by people who were equipped to deal with his delusion that he was Sherlock Holmes?  
  
Neither of them moved.  
  
“Right.” John said, after a while, when his tea was finished and he couldn’t hide behind it any more.  
  
“Right.” Sherlock confirmed. His tea was likewise drained, he hadn’t been kidding about needing it.  
  
“I’ll get my coat.” 

  


Upstairs, Mary Watson rolled back over in bed. On the one hand, she didn’t have anywhere to be, and a continued lie-in was beckoning her into its soft, pillowy arms. On the other, John wasn’t going to bring her her tea, because he’d just gone gallivanting off somewhere with his partner, and that was annoying. He’d startled her awake by stubbing his toe in the hall. Consequently, she felt little guilt about eavesdropping on their conversation. Sherlock evidently had a bee in his deerstalker about something, but what with the boiling of the kettle and the fridge door opening and shutting multiple times on top of their apparently deliberately muted voices, all she’d been able to make out was something to do with Sherlock and Molly. She snorted. As if.


	3. We go, we go.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They strode through a throng of office workers who didn’t want to be there, free newspaper touts trying to give away their morning stock by thrusting the rolled up papers into the former’s faces, and a scattering of individuals whose extensively made up faces and perfect hair juxtaposed their zombie-like expressions of sleep deprivation to mark them unmistakably as dancers on their way to an early morning cruise ship audition.

To the irritation, but not surprise, of a platform full of commuters Sherlock Holmes and John Watson elbowed their way onto a Victoria Line train. Moriarty just had to hatch whatever the hell this was just as rush hour was starting, didn’t he? A still almost pristine copy of the Metro scuffed underfoot. John absent-mindedly contemplated picking it up to see what Nemi was up to today.

“Vauxhall.” He muttered. “Why Vauxhall? It’s in the middle of town, the railway arches are public.” 

“Not this one.” Sherlock replied. “This one’s due for the Rail Arch Regeneration Programme. It’s boarded up, out of bounds to the public. The whole row is. And the track above is closed for planned engineering works.”

“Of course it is.” A sweaty armpit moved into John’s face, and a woman with a “baby on board” badge glared at him as if it had been his job to make someone in a seat stand up for her. He shuffled closer to Sherlock. “Remind me why we’re doing this?” 

“You know why.”

“But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? There’s something about him. A certain… Holmesiness. I felt it. You felt it. Didn’t you?”

“Disturbingly so.”

The tunnel they were going through opened up on one side, and another train roared past them, so John had to almost touch his mouth to Sherlock’s ear and shout in order to be heard.

“Do you have any idea who he is?”

“Several, but none-” Sherlock shouted back into John’s ear, shifting a little closer to mirror the pose. “-conclusive.” The tunnel closed up again as he was mid-sentence, leaving him shouting the last word in the relatively quiet carriage. Several heads turned to look at them. Sherlock scowled. John rubbed his ear, and dug his phone out of his pocket.

_what are they?_

He tapped into a note taking app, and passed it to Sherlock. Sherlock tapped away for quite a while before handing it back, with the addition of

_1\. He’s M’s patsy_  
_2\. He’s delusional, really thinks he’s me, M’s kidnapped him_  
_3\. He’s a con man, has convinced M that he’s my uncle, motive unknown_  
_4\. He really is my uncle, who I’ve never met or heard of before but M’s somehow found and kidnapped him_  
_5\. ???_  
_6\. Profit!_

John read this, and frowned.

_you’re not taking this seriously._

Sherlock replied

_Gallows humour. Sorry. I’m trying not to scream._

_We could go back._

_No._

_If 3, how did he convince him?_ John typed, an unconvinced look on his face.

 _Fucking good question._ Sherlock stabbed back. John took his phone back before he could break the screen.

 

Vauxhall arrived, as it always does, with no fanfare. Given that this was a train of commuters, they did have one advantage over off-peak travellers - everybody knew the etiquette, and let them get off before trying to get on. There was even a blessed lack of idiots deciding that rush hour was just the best time to tote their toddler around in its enormous personal carriage on public transport.

“How are we going to do this?” John was a little short of breath. They were walking up the escalator, whose designers hadn’t really expected that sort of behaviour, and had made each step just that little bit too high to climb comfortably.

“I’m going in. You’re covering me.”

“That’s it?”

“Unless you can think of something better? Our only advantage is that he didn’t see you on the screen, and that’s a scant one. Stay out of sight unless you need to come in, all guns blazing.” Sherlock looked pointedly down at John’s crotch. His pocket bulged with his handgun, but that couldn’t be helped - they hadn’t had time to conceal it. John didn’t know what they’d do if they came across a suspicious policeman and he got searched. It didn’t seem all that likely, but then, they were going to be within spitting distance of Brixton. Who knew when a culturally sensitive PC would randomly stop someone genuinely at random for once?

Perhaps simplicity was best. If they were dealing with Moriarty - and how, Jesus Christ, how could they possibly be dealing with a man who had sprayed his brains all over a rooftop while Sherlock watched? - then he would probably expect an elaborate ploy. Anyone else would probably _get_ an elaborate ploy. For Moriarty, this was effectively a double bluff.

“Suppose, just suppose, that none of this is real, we’re both still asleep, and sharing a nightmare.” John said, as they surfaced. 

“That would be nice.”

“Might make a bit more sense than what’s going on.”

“Sadly, we can’t rely on that being the case. We have to deal with this bloody awful mess that’s in front of us.”

 

They strode through a throng of office workers who didn’t want to be there, free newspaper touts trying to give away their morning stock by thrusting the rolled up papers into the former’s faces, and a scattering of individuals whose extensively made up faces and perfect hair juxtaposed their zombie-like expressions of sleep deprivation to mark them unmistakably as dancers on their way to an early morning cruise ship audition. 

A few sharp turns took them out of the glare of dystopian glass and concrete architecture, behind a temporary fence obscured with what looked like school P.E. mats attached to the wire with cable ties. These were intended to be sound insulation to protect the public from the noise of pneumatic drills and concrete mixers, if work ever got started. Crossing this put John and Sherlock in an apparently deserted triangular yard, wide enough to turn a truck around in and long enough for a drag race. It ran between two railway tracks, which were thirty feet up in the air and met at a sharp angle, making the yard an elongated wedge. The train tracks were held up by great semicircular arches of stone and brick built in the frenzied heyday of steam and industrialisation, which had almost immediately been leased out as workshops and business units. Those businesses, of course, were now gone, as were those that had succeeded them over the next century or so, leaving the units empty for gentrification. If you ignored the street lights and angular aluminium cable conduits bolted onto the semi-crumbling Victorian brick pillars between the arches, and didn’t look up to see the signs warning of death by electrocution for any fool who trespassed onto the railway, or the cloudy traces of the flights going by overhead, you could believe that the place had last seen humans when Victoria was still on the throne. 

John and Sherlock ducked behind the first pillar and stopped. Given that the front of the arch had been enclosed and the door boarded up, they didn’t have much room to flatten themselves into.

“He says it’s the red door in the third arch. It’s the green one in the next arch, with the less obvious camera over the doorframe.” Sherlock whispered quickly. “Did you see where the ground has been disturbed? He’s tried to make it look like the red door’s been used, but you can see that the disturbance by the green door has been made by multiple sizes of foot, and in multiple directions. Someone was struggling. By contrast, the footsteps leading to the red are far too clear, all neatly facing towards it - someone walked backwards as well as forwards to leave three sets - and all left by the same pair of boots. It’s a terribly crude attempt at a cover-up.”

“Why would he do that?” John asked. Sherlock looked at him as if he had been partially lobotomised.

“So he can watch me looking stupid trying to open a locked door, of course. Stay here. Wait until I’m out of sight, then follow.”

Having said so, Sherlock strode off across the yard. John wasn’t sure, but he could imagine, how much nerve it had taken him to do so.


	4. Deerstalking would be a very fine sport if only the deer had guns.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man on the side stage was almost as he had appeared in the picture, except for the generous quantity of black gaffer tape cocooned over his mouth, and what was now unquestionably a black eye. He shifted his head ever so slightly back, and his eyes glittered; brightly, reassuringly, blatantly alive. They focused on Sherlock.

Sherlock considered going straight to the green door, just to make the point that he _wasn’t_ that stupid, _actually_ , but thought better of it. He made a show of trying the red door, and almost believed that he was purely allowing Moriarty to believe that he'd got that one over him. No purpose would be served by stalling for time, so he definitely wasn’t doing that. 

He made no effort to shut the door behind him, nor to persuade it to stay open. It swung half shut in apparent agreement with his apparent ambivalence. The huge semi-cylindrical tunnel he was in had been truncated with a partition wall. A blacker square of darkness suggested a space beyond that wall, that had once been a cloakroom(management accepts no responsibility for items pilfered from your bags by staff) and at times, a box office. While some of the arches in this row had housed garages, workshops, stock overflow storage and a succession of ill-fated coffee shops - it was a little too out of the way for them to thrive, but they still tried - this one had most recently been a nightclub. In addition to its regular drink-and/or-dance-yourself-into-unconsciousness nights, it had also played host to a few fringe theatre productions. There were still a few posters for a punk-rock musical theatre retelling of _Twelfth Night_ and a desperate looking comedian’s one man show stuck to the walls. It looked like his schtick had been puppetry without puppets. His desperation was well founded.

There was no lighting here, but a glow from beyond spilled out through a small archway - barely more than eight feet across - that connected to the next main arch. It probably would have sufficed to show the way on its own, but with the additional triangle of daylight lying carelessly on the floor, he definitely didn’t need to incapacitate his hand by getting his phone out for use as a torch. 

The floor was only just worthy of being called that; really, it was ground with delusions of grandeur. Only poured concrete with enough cracks and potholes that someone ought to just put it out of its misery and call it crazy paving. It was just uneven enough that in sensible shoes, a twisted ankle was a remote but distinct possibility. Clubbers who had come here regularly must have just known not to wear stilettos. Where the light from the tunnel beyond hit the wall, it sparkled. Just in case it wasn’t dark enough, the walls had been painted black; but before the paint dried, just in case people couldn’t see where the walls were, it had been pebble-dashed with glitter.

Sherlock stepped over a thick outdoor extension cable that trailed across the pitted concrete of the cavern beyond the corridor. Someone could trip on that and break something. Moriarty was probably hoping it would be him. The air was damp, he established with a big, steadying lungful of it, but not as fetid as it should have been if all the doors had been locked since the nightclub had been bought out and shut down by the railway company. Assuming it hadn’t been closed before that, for health and safety violations. Some of the shallower holes in the floor had water in them. It was probably greenish, but the light was too dim to tell - it came from yet another tunnel, deeper still. The cable snaked towards it. He walked steadily through the shadows, acknowledging that they could indeed hold many hidden terrors, but given that Moriarty(who was supposed to be fucking _dead_ and part of Sherlock still insisted that he must be) had said that he wanted to talk to him, he could reasonably gamble that any ambushes or booby traps would be kept for later. Probably.

He refused to slow down as he walked through the arch into the deepest tunnel. His feet really, really wanted him to, but damn it, he was in control, not them. He stepped into a dramatic spotlight, then out of it again. Bollocks to that psycho’s stage management. 

With the light behind him he wasn’t dazzled - he could see the layout of the space. It had several raised areas, any selection of which could have been used as stages or dance podiums. 

_Podia_ , a little voice whispered too loudly in his head, which nearly made him scoff because there was no way he was really that certain it was the correct Latin plural. The misplaced pedantry was some terrified part of his mind trying to find a way to distract him. Furthest away from the door was the largest platform, clearly the main stage. Down the sides of the walls, with minimal headroom thanks to the walls turning into the ceiling past a certain point, smaller, lower, round-edged rostra rose from the floor. In order to not completely block the floor, they had been built offset from one another. Between the stages, at ground level, there was a drab looking regular-sized door, which must have been mostly used by staff to get around quickly when it was a club, and as an entrance by actors when the place was being used as a theatre. An empty rail above it showed that an effort had once been made to conceal it. It couldn’t have worked very well, given the curve of the wall. The curtain would have hung about two feet in front of the door. Perhaps it had been fastened to the wall at the sides - yes, there were tiny screweyes just barely visibly protruding from the wall, dotting the brick in two lines going down from the ends of the curtain rail.

The rostrum nearest Sherlock was empty. The next, though, supported a seated figure. The figure was not moving. It made no sound. It wasn’t necessarily the man from the video call, he told himself, as he kept walking towards it. It could be a dummy. It could be Moriarty himself. And even if it was the man from the video, he might just be unconscious-

 

**“Hello, sweetie. Did you miss me?”**

The playful, deadly voice boomed from unseen speakers all around. Sherlock’s neck muscles turned briefly into steel cables, but he did not jump. He did, however, stop walking. Now that his presence was acknowledged he wouldn’t be surprised if the game was on. And the game may well include tripwires.

“Really, Jim?” Sherlock was a little relieved that - to his own ears anyway - he just sounded annoyed. It was just a voice, though, so far. 

The first sentence had raised his suspicions, made him analyse the acoustics, the second had confirmed(or at least supported) them. It had only come from the speakers. He still had no concrete evidence that the bastard was alive. 

“You’re the one who said you wanted to speak face to face.”

“So I did.” 

Yes. The sound balance was wrong. The reverb had been miscalculated, or not calculated at all. It was not someone in the room speaking into a microphone and being amplified through the speakers. 

Sherlock let himself smile, then wiped it off. Someone was watching him, even if he didn’t know who that someone was. They might even be physically in the room with him - hadn’t Moriarty himself scolded him for always wanting things to be convoluted and clever? Sure, he wanted it to be that he was being watched remotely, maybe even from the far side of the planet, but wouldn’t it be just like Moriarty to use practical stage effects and count on him thinking it was CGI? Although Moriarty could, should, _must_ be dead. He still held on to the hope that he was.

He had located the speakers. If someone was hiding, then logically they wouldn’t be where he would instinctively look. He set a bored expression on his face - not as easily as usual - and with half-lidded eyes, studied the shadows between the origin points of the voice, staring directly ahead of him. Directly ahead was the main stage. There was _something_ there, but that wasn’t very helpful. It was hardly a featureless room. There were bits of abandoned furniture and partially dismantled god-knows-what lying in most corners. Up on the stage, though, was that pale patch of grey a reflection or a glow? It was an irregular shape, familiar, a bit like the faint glow of a severely dimmed mobile phone that was, despite its owner’s best efforts, lighting up their chest as they tried to see the screen without anyone else seeing them-

If it had been a movie, there would have been a couple of loud clunks on the soundtrack to indicate huge switches being thrown, and shutters on lights being thrown open. There might have been a _vwoom_ of electricity and some crackles. 

As it was there was a slight buzzing as three more bright white spotlights came on - one on the far stage, one on Sherlock, one on the side platform.  


The man on the side stage was almost as he had appeared in the picture, except for the generous quantity of black gaffer tape cocooned over his mouth, and what was now unquestionably a black eye. He shifted his head ever so slightly back, and his eyes glittered; brightly, reassuringly, blatantly alive. They focused on Sherlock, but did not seem to beg for rescue. He had no doubt that he was being studied. Hairs stood up on the back of his neck.

His own spotlight surrounded him, with him standing exactly in its dead centre. It was pointing straight down. He had to admit that he was a little impressed by that. 

Then in the third, brightest(of course) yet most diffuse(so it was flattering to the contours of his face - of course), light was Jim bloody Moriarty. Who was supposed to be dead. He made a throne of an old wooden chair, with one leg crossed, his foot up on his knee. Sherlock had an unwelcome flashback to a very similar image; only this time, there was no crown, orb, or sceptre; instead a shiny black top hat, a sleek, new, top of the line burner phone, and a large old hand gun. After all he had done to maximise his spectre, and all the nightmares he had dominated, Moriarty looked so small. Not a king at all.

Maybe it was a waxwork. A Madame Tussuad's escapee. Would Moriarty’s network go as far as having one of him made? Of course they would, if convincing people that he was still alive would serve their agenda. Sherlock would have found it immensely reassuring if, at that point, he could remember a recent missing person report that mentioned the missing person being a waxwork artist.

Then Jim looked up from the phone, and that last shred of hope was gone. Sherlock swayed slightly on his feet. His stomach was a pool of cold acid. Moriarty slid the phone into a pocket, and looked directly at him.

“You found the place alright, then.” he asked lightly. 

Completely different sound quality, and no sign of a mic. Sherlock had at least been right about the welcome message being prerecorded. He must have had it cued up on his phone, along with the lights.

“Traffic wasn’t too bad.” Sherlock bantered back without thinking. Moriarty grinned. 

And why would he have bothered with setting up and playing clips of his own voice? To prevent Sherlock from echolocating him?

“Oh, good. The Victoria line can be a nightmare, this time of day.” 

Doing so was pointless, when he was just going to light himself up a few seconds later. 

Sadly in the sense of illumination, not immolation. 

“Is that why you chose it?” 

But it had tricked him for a few seconds, hadn’t it? Tricked him into considering it more likely than not that Moriarty wasn’t in the room.

“The Victoria Line? Really, Sherlock - how else would you have got here? Bus? I’m told you’ve developed something of an aversion to taxis.” 

Which had briefly given him a false sense of certainty.

“I’ve had some bad experiences with a couple of truly terrible drivers.” 

Which, by revealing it to be false, Moriarty had used to make him doubt himself and put him on the back foot. God, why was he playing along? He mentally smacked himself for letting himself be drawn. 

“This time of day.”

“You mean, was my intention to force you into a confined space with god knows how many questionably washed strangers who want you - and, admittedly, everyone else in the vicinity - dead?” He chuckled, a little abashedly. “No, I just couldn’t bear to wait.”

“Well, I’m here.” Sherlock said bluntly.

“So you are.”

“What do you want?”

“Sherlock! So abrupt. Can’t we have a nice, civil conversation?”

“No. Get to the point.”

“Rude.” Moriarty addressed the man in the chair. His voice jumped up in pitch, becoming a twisted caricature of a child. “Mr. Holmes, can Sherlock come out to play?”

The man didn’t say anything, and somehow gave the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have dignified him with a response even if he had not had a significant portion of a roll of gaffer tape over his mouth.

_“Play?”_ Sherlock rolled the word around in his mouth before letting it out, as if it was an unfamiliar thing that he was trying to get a feel for. As if he wasn’t, on a deep but exposed level, resisting being seduced by the prospect of battling wits with Moriarty. “No. I’m stopping you.” 

“Well, duh. That’s how the game works. I do something convoluted and illegal, you follow me around solving my little puzzles, I step it up a gear, you step it up a gear, we have a grand old time outfoxing each other-”

“It’s not a game.” Sherlock insisted. People died when Moriarty played games. “I won't play.”

Jim just threw him a pitying look.

“Liar.”

“What do you want?” Sherlock repeated himself with as little inflection as he could. Not that he expected it to make much difference, Moriarty would know he was getting to him anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. Moriarty abruptly broke into song.

_“I want the world, I want the whole world_ \- I want a lot of things, Sherlock. I want world peace, so that I can start World War Three and know for sure that it was my finger that pressed the button. I want my empire back. I want a pony. But right this very minute, I want you to stand next to your uncle.” Sherlock didn't move. Jim gestured with the revolver. “Go on, now.”

“Why?”

“So I don't have to keep turning my head.” Moriarty pulled back the hammer. It made a satisfyingly solid sound, for all that it was only familiar from the soundtracks of period dramas. “Get up onto that stage. Now - before I start reinforcing negative national stereotypes and fucking kneecap you.”

Seething with resentment and resisting the urge to stamp like a toddler, Sherlock did as he was told.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took forever. My apologies to anyone who was waiting. But look! It's literally twice as long now!


	5. Forward on the foe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John discovered that the man’s arms were tightly bound behind him, and that was a ball-ache because without knowing if he was Moriarty’s victim or his accomplice, he had no idea whether or not to free him.

John had found a body. Had tripped over it, in fact. 

As instructed, he'd waited for Sherlock to go through the door, and then as a further precaution, slowly counted to ten. He wasn't sure exactly what he was being cautious of, though god knows there was plenty to choose from. 

Nothing happened. No alarms went off. No hired muscle appeared, to follow Sherlock or to eliminate him. There was only the distant sound of the city, just the other side of a temporary fence and a whole world away, to suggest that time had not frozen.

He grit his teeth and strolled across the yard, consciously not letting his hand fall to his pocket to reassure himself that the gun was there, horribly aware of the apathetic gaze of the thumb-sized camera on the door. It was almost a relief to enter the monster's lair and get out of its field of vision.

He saw the light ahead of him, as Sherlock had done, and followed it as far as the second chamber. He could hear their voices. They both sounded real. He paused, trying to make out words over the pounding of his heart, but it was too loud. His eyes had adjusted enough that he could see that the doorway with the beacon glow was not the only way out of this tunnel, and crept away to go through a barely visible side door, which he hoped would take him parallel to the space Sherlock and the other man(please god not Moriarty, it can’t be Moriarty, Moriarty is supposed to be fucking dead) were in.

That was when his feet made the acquaintance of the kidneys belonging to a large, but prone and unmoving, man. He scuffed against the floor trying to catch himself, and the sound seemed deafening. No-one could actually see him screwing his face up, trying to claw the noise back, but he did it anyway. He froze and waited to be discovered, now ready to draw and fire, but nothing had happened by the time he had to let his breath out and pull in a new one. He didn’t seem to have attracted any attention. 

The voices in the other tunnel hadn’t changed, but there was a soft groan from the floor. He knelt, since to not offer any sort of medical attention could get him struck off and Moriarty(in the absurdly unlikely case that he wasn’t dead) was just the sort of meticulous bastard who might think of that eventuality and have an infrared camera somewhere to gather evidence, and gingerly probed the shape of a man to establish where his various body parts were. The man had groaned, so he didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was breathing, but he had to check for injuries. In doing so he discovered that the man’s arms were tightly bound behind him, and that was a ball-ache because without knowing if he was Moriarty’s victim or his accomplice, John had no idea whether or not to free him. Fortunately then the man groaned again, and in a husky whisper enquired

“Boss?”, so John gently rolled him onto his back, grasped his head and with carefully calculated nonlethal force, smacked it backwards into the floor.

The goon didn’t say anything else.

 


	6. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m trying to see exactly what it is.” Moriarty sounded faintly puzzled. “It’s not your eyes, they’re completely different. He actually looks after his eyebrows, you could learn something there, maybe invest in some tweezers. There’s some similarity in the cheekbones, but not so’s you’d notice. Your mouths don’t have even the slightest little thing in common, nor do your hairlines, and as for the earlobes - ugh, let’s not. I guess it could be the chin-”

“Why is he gagged?” Sherlock demanded.

“Oh, Jesus - he wouldn't shut up! I have never wanted to know as much about antique violins as I do now! Do you know how to tell the difference between a _Stradivari_ and an _Amati_?”

“Yes.” Sherlock scoffed, but Moriarty didn't stop to hear it.

“I bloody do now, and I never wanted to!” He switched gears with a little laugh. “So, here I am, back from the grave.” He abruptly murdered his smile, and a cold light ignited in his eyes. His voice dropped. “Aren't you going to ask me how I did it?”

Squibs. Blanks. Long-range sniper-fired tranquiliser dart. Miraculous one-in-a-million point-blank head shot survival. Hypnosis. Misdirection, achieved in concert with emotional manipulation. Hallucinogens. Retroactively manipulated memory. Body double, with extensive plastic surgery. Freakishly lifelike android. Clone. Necromancy. Aliens. Literal pact with Satan.

“Alright, I’ll bite.” Sherlock replied, grudgingly. He sighed, pursed his lips, grimaced. “How did you do it? How did you work out the password for Molly's tablet?”

Jim cocked his head to one side.

“Funny man.” He regarded Sherlock coolly. “Fine, that’s fine. Grand. I don’t care how you did it, either. How you got off that roof. Alive.” Sherlock just stared at him, hoping he could develop the ability to make his hypothalamus explode just by concentrated power of hatred. Jim scowled, then smiled again. “Which reminds me - you should have seen your uncle’s face when I said-” Moriarty jumped to his feet, hopped down to the floor, and leapt up onto the lower plinth. He prowled around the edge of Sherlock’s “uncle”’s spotlight and when he had the shadows playing just right, lunged forward, snarling _“Reichenbach.” ._

Sherlock recoiled. The other man closed his eyes, turning his head minutely away from the rude intrusion into his personal space. Just barely visibly, under the tape, his upper lip pulled into a sneer, as if he was offended by an unpleasant smell. Moriarty pouted. 

“Aw, he didn’t do it again.”

He abruptly pushed Sherlock closer to the chair, so that he was barely millimetres away from the stranger’s upper arm, jumped back off the stage and sauntered into the first spotlight he’d manipulated Sherlock into. He tapped the revolver absent-mindedly against his thigh, suddenly silent, swapping his cold black gaze from one of his captives to the other.

 _“What?”_ Sherlock demanded when his very limited supply of patience wore out. He felt a surprisingly sharp jab in the side of his thigh, and realised that it was his “uncle”’s elbow. So he wasn’t tied as tightly as he looked. That was good to know.

“I’m trying to see exactly what it is.” Moriarty sounded faintly puzzled. “It’s not your eyes, they’re completely different. He actually looks after his eyebrows, you could learn something there, maybe invest in some tweezers. There’s some similarity in the cheekbones, but not so’s you’d notice. Your mouths don’t have even the slightest little thing in common, nor do your hairlines, and as for the earlobes - ugh, let’s not. I guess it could be the chin-”

There was an exasperated huff. To both Sherlock and Moriarty’s surprise, it had come from the man in the chair.

“Quite right, _Uncle_. It’s completely irrelevant.”

“Right, right.” Jim laughed, and aimed the revolver at Sherlock. It looked like he had to put a fair amount of effort into holding it up. “I wasn’t lying earlier, by the way. It really is good to see you. I shouldn’t like to live in a world with no Sherlock Holmes.”

“So what’s the point in aiming a gun at me? You’ve just told me you don’t intend to pull the trigger.”

“Well, I wouldn’t _like_ it. But the booby prize would be knowing that I was the one who made it happen.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re really funny?” Sherlock said at length.

“Well, as it happens-”

“-they were lying.”

“Ooh. Ouch! Burn!” Jim laughed through a grimace. “I’m gonna need some calamine lotion on that! I hope the doctor’s got some with him. Now, Sherlock, I did tell you to come alone,” he scolded gently. “but I suppose I can make an exception for your other half.”

“He’s not my-”

“Of course he is. Doctor _Wat_ son, I know you’re _the_ re.” Moriarty sang. He clicked off the safety catch of his revolver. “Come out where I can see you, please, or Sherlock’s going to be walking funny. Because I’ll have shot him, somewhere non-lethal but exquisitely painful. Not because of anything you’ve done.”

John grit his teeth and stepped out from the side door, directly into the madman’s field of vision, not even able to draw his gaze away from Sherlock and the stranger.

“Look, we’re not-”

“Of course you are. Over there with Sherlock Senior, please.” He waved John over to the bound man’s side with the barrel of the gun. “You know, this gun is like something straight out of an old Western. It’s an antique, it’s beautiful, it barely looks aged at all.” He examined the revolver in both hands, turning it this way and that so the light played prettily on the well-maintained, oiled surfaces. There was a ripping sound, as Sherlock took the opportunity to tear the tape from the bound man's mouth. Snakelike, Moriarty had the gun pointed back at the three men before they could do anything else stupid while he was distracted. “I’m not actually sure how this gun works? But since old Holmes here was carrying it around, I very much doubt that it’s a prop.”

“It isn’t.” the man he called Sherlock’s uncle confirmed grimly.

“And neither is this one.” 

Moriarty’s face stretched into a gratifyingly authentic look of surprise. 

There was another revolver’s barrel pressed into the back of his head.


End file.
